Of the many things Glass is expected to be capable of in the future, augmented reality in some form is one of them. Facial recognition demos like the one below show that we’re not far off achieving it.

There have been a number of people in the medical community who are particularly excited about Google Glass’ hands-free use. For medical professionals, it makes perfect sense to have a hands free computer with a camera and software to make their lives a little easier as they move from patient to patient. A partially completed Glassware demo called MedRef helps identify some common use cases and sets the tone for a larger conversation involving facial recognition and Google Glass.

When most people think facial recognition there’s this sci-fi kind of feeling to it. The idea that someone can walk by you with Glass on and the camera will identify a face and overlay relevant data creates a dramatic, but mostly unrealistic image in most people’s heads. The 5MP camera in Glass isn’t really designed for that kind of rapid image analysis, and without image stabilization the camera on you head is constantly moving. If you want facial recognition in Glass, you’ll need to stand perfectly still and grab a photo of someone else standing perfectly still. Once the photo is taken, the Glassware can do the rest of the work.

Glass apps rely on web services, and as a result don’t live on the actual headset. In this demonstration the photo is uploaded to the facial recognition software, and the work is done remotely on a server. The same can be said for attaching notes to medical records in the app. It’s a great concept, but really requires cooperation on behalf of the person in front of you in order to work. Of course, you can also take a photo of images on a screen and use that for facial recognition, as shown in the demo.

We’re still a little while away from the AR future that everyone either hopes or fears will come with Glass in time. However, open source projects like this one put the right tools in the hands of developers to help build the software that will really make Glass useful.